Parades, Strikes, and Sean Paul...never a dull moment in Brukina

Merry Christmas everyone! Well, close enough anyway. We're definitely ready for Christmas here in Titao. Last week we realized that we should probably do a little house cleaning before my parents arrive for Christmas (we had a cobweb situation that could rival any haunted house). And so, armed with about 10 students, lots of soap, and the promise of a soccer game later, we got the house swept, mopped, and organized in about 4 hours. Since Burkinabé tend to keep their homes pretty clean, I'm sure we now have a bad reputation around town for how dirty our house was. Oh well.

The Independence Day parade was December 11th. It was fun, kind of. We arrived around 6am for parade line-up and finally started marching around 10. How did we pass the 4 hours of waiting time? It was a combination of standing in the sun, squatting in the sun, and being rushed into our formation by the officers in charge for no apparent reason other than we haven't done it in the last 20 minutes. Our group in particular managed to kill a lot of time whenever a new officer would walk by because they kept changing our formation and then changing it back again (2 lines of 6 or 6 lines of 2?). In the end, we went for a triangle- fancy! Our group consisted of 12 PCVs and 3 Japanese volunteers. According to our sign, between the 15 of us, we were representing all non-Africans in Burkina. Being the only white people in the parade definitely drew some attention. The highlight of the parade for me was getting to see and be the honored recipient of a wave from President Compaore himself (I like to call him "my boy Blaise") as he drove by before the parade. There was a huge military showing in the parade. The two groups that really stuck out for me were the "soldiers of the night" who wore black face masks and marched by punching the air in front of them, and the group of guys-who-watch-too-many-action-movies that put 7 armed people on one moto, each aiming their weapons in different directions, Charlie's Angels-style.

Two days after Independence Day every year there is a student strike in remembrance of a reporter that was killed. For the past few weeks, I asked the other teachers at our school if they thought our students would strike and they all unanimously said "no" since we weren't a major city. They struck. Two days in a row, the students let their teachers get 30 minutes into a lesson before they started filing out of class. Since I have the younger kids, they just sat anxiously watching other students file by the door, not sure what to do until I gave them permission to leave. The strike was actually convenient for us because it gave us two free days to finish filling out report cards.

A popular thing for women to do here before holidays is paint their feet and hands with henna. Last week I was henna-d by a student. I didn't realize what a big commitment this is: you have to sit still with plastic bags on your feet and hands for hours...twice! Now, whatever you might be picturing in your head for henna, stop there. The decorations they do here are not so much brown flowers and vines, but black bars (picture a lemur in prison). Unfortunately, we ran out of the black layer for my hand so it has maintained an orange umpalumpa-esque hue. Also, there was a little henna left at the end so my student decided to get creative and wrote "Mrs" (instead of Madame) across the top of one foot. This would have been a little odd, but okay except the "s" didn't come through very well so now my right foot has been tagged "Mr" across the top. Awesome.

Sean Paul had a concert in Ouaga last night. You have to admire a world-renowned artist coming to a small, little-known country to perform. Unless of course, that artist doesn't bother to learn the name of your country and continually mispronounces it throughout the show and only says one word, "merci", in the national language during the entire show. Mr. Paul's philosophical tweet before the show yesterday: "Brukina Faso is a poor country. The people have so much love tho."

On that insightful note, I hope you all have a fabulous Christmas. Thanks again to everyone for keeping in touch with calls, emails, and amazing packages. (Is this guy on the right fabulous or what!)

Pas de Titre

Hello everyone. Sorry it has been a while; we finally made it back to the internet- now I just need to remember how to use this French keyboard...where is the "m"!!!!

Life in Titao is going well. We gave our final tests yesterday so we have two more weeks of school to wrap things up and fill out our report cards before Christmas break. Our school principal was moved to a new city last month. It was interesting to see how everyone waiting until he was gone to tell us about how he was taking money from the school. Even our PC boss, who is based in Ouaga, alluded to it during his last visit to observe our classes. Since then we sat down with the new principal to discuss secondary projects we could do with the school. We spent a long time trying to figure out where all of the money the students pay in fees is going every year. The real mystery to me is our APE, the school's parent association. They get $7 from each of our 1000 students every year and when I asked what they spent it on, I was told they have the burden of buying drinks at our 3 annual meetings, buying lunch for inspectors when they visit, and paying for the bus tickets and lodging when students from two grades take national exams at the end of the year... Suffice it to say that I don't see any of our secondary projects involving us providing funds.

Speaking of inspectors, our school had a surprise visit this week from the regional inspectors. I'll never understand why these annual visits can't be planned more than one day in advance. (Don't get me wrong, I love the last minute shuffle to rearrange everyone's schedule as much as the next guy...keeps things spicy) Tuesday I was informed that the biology inspector would be watching my class on Wednesday and the English inspector would come Thursday. Naturally, Wednesday is my English day and Thursday is biology so we had to move everyone around to create classes at the hours they requested. My English inspection went well, but biology wasn't so great. The two main themes from the biology critique were: 1. you don't speak French (ouch!) and 2. you didn't do a real lesson, it was just a revision (my class had a test the next morning). The inspector seemed to derive joy from throwing one or both of these between any other topic..."you had a nice diagram on the board, but since you don't speak french and it was just a revision and not a real lesson, the students didn't need to copy it" Oh well. Any hard feelings from my critique were quickly washed away by the joy of watching all of the other professors stress out over their impending inspections. There was a fiery debate in the salle de prof over whether you should take attendence in the beginning of class or the end, the best way to hide your cellphone (which is the official timekeeper), and whether or not any new vocabulary should be underlined or placed in a separate box on the right. Priceless.

This year we decided to fête Thanksgiving in Djibo so that Aaron and I could get out of village for a weekend. Thanksgiving weekend happened to fall on the same day as Tabaski this year, kind of. In Titao, Ouaga, and most of the country, Tabaski was on Friday. In Djibo, Tabaski was on Saturday. I had several people explain to me how the day is chosen and why they were different. Don't ask me: I still don't know. All I know is that the bus from Titao to Djibo said it wasn't running on Tabaski but since there were two Tabaskis nobody knew for sure when, or if, the bus was coming. Thanksgiving was fun. We managed to find a pumpkin to make pies and our neighbor brought a turkey. Throw that in with some gravy and stuffing packets, and it was like mini-America, but with camels. There was a brief moment when I thought I wouldnt be stuffing my face over Thanksgiving due to a small language mix-up. I've developed a habit of just going along with what people say to me even if I didn't understand it all and figuring it out as the conversation continues. Normally, this works out. The other day, my friend Mariam (thats's right, I have a female friend!) was talking to be about something she was doing with her church for 40 days before the new year and told me I was invited to join. I wasn't sure what was going on, so I just went with it and said sure. Turns out that word I didn't quite catch, was somewhat crucial. She is fasting for 40 days. I don't fast; I get grumpy. I had to go back and tell her I'd pass this time, maybe during the hot season when you're already reaching unknown levels of physical discomfort everyday.

This Friday is Independence Day in Burkina. Every year they do a parade and ceremony in a new city and this year it is in Ouahigouya, near us. The volunteers from the region are going to be in the parade so we had to come into town for parade practice tomorrow morning. Whenever I tell people that we'll be in the parade on Friday but we're only doing one practice, I tend to get one of two reactions; outrageous laughter or stunned silence. I'm not sure what to make of this. Granted, the groups in Titao have been practicing for weeks, but how hard could it be? Get in a line, check. Right foot, check. Left foot, check... I do think we might have to do that awkward straight leg and arm march, but I think we can handle it.

How Do I Reach These Kids!

ςa fait deux jours! It's been two days! This is what we say in Burkina when you haven't seen or spoken to people in a while. I would say it's a helpful piece of colloquial knowledge if you plan on visiting the region and can help you avoid many awkward conversations where you respond, "no, it's been 3 weeks", followed by a weird silence.

The closing ceremony for English camp went well. We were told it started at 4, so we arrived at 3:30, just in time to hear that it didn't start until 6:30. The extra time was helpful, though, because they wanted one of the volunteers to give a small speech in French to the 200 or so students and parents present and that volunteer ending up being me. I think only those who witnessed me cringe and shake my way through freshman-year speech class can fully understand what a big step this was for me. Did my hands shake? You bet. But overall, it went well and I was somehow infinitely less nervous than during that first 5 min pick-your-topic practice speech from freshman year.

Unfortunately, our trip to Ouaga ended on somewhat of a bad note. We had a lot of heavy books and things to bring back, so we opted to take a cab instead of riding our bikes to the bus station. There was already a man in the backseat of the cab so I sat up front and Aaron sat in the back with one of our bags since our bikes had filled the trunk. The driver was acting weird and kept asking Aaron to move his bags so that he could see and the man in the back was coughing a lot and leaning over Aaron and out the window. At one point, we pulled over to the side and the cab stopped so the driver asked Aaron and the other man to get out and push, saying we were pretty much out of gas. Honestly, we didn't think much of this since we've experienced much worse things in Burkinabé cabs. Finally, after we'd driven a little further, the driver said that his car couldn't make it and pulled over to the side and started throwing our bikes on the side of the road. He told us the ride was free, he was out of gas, and pointed in the direction of the gare (bus station).

It took Aaron about 15 seconds to realize that his wallet was gone from the zippered pocket in his pants and by then the car (which suddenly had lots of dispensible gas) was gone. Interesting to note that although those jerks robbed us and dumped us on the side of the road, the driver actually pointed us in the right direction to the gare. That's service! After about 20 minutes of riding around with our heavy bags, we found the gare, hopped on the bus, and tried not to talk about what just happened.

School is in full swing now. Aaron and I are both teaching more hours this year. Aaron has three 6e math classes again as well as 1 5e math class. I'm teaching 3 6e English classes and 1 6e biology. We were told that, despite our requests to teach older students, the administration prefers to have us teach the younger kids because we motivate them to continue. While this is nice for the ego, we're fully aware that they're just making stuff up because Burkinabé teachers don't want to teach the younger kids. Can you blame them? This year, each of the four 6e classes have over 100 students and their French is poor to nonexistent. That is why M. and Mme Rose aren't taking any lip this year. We were told that classes started Oct. 1, so we began teaching Oct. 1 and our classes are silent. The other teachers at our school are funny. For the first 4 or 5 days, they came to school during their class times, but instead of going to class, they sat in the teacher's lounge and talked about how it was impossible to cover all of the material. When their allotted class time was over, they went home.

I'm always surprised at what an emotional rollercoaster teaching can be for me. There are some days when I walk out of class feeling like the queen of secondary education: I can teach these kids anything. Other days, I am overcome with flashbacks from Stand and Deliver, "how do I reach these kids?!" Overall, I think this year will go much better than last year for both of us.

I think by this point Americans have grown accustomed to the wide array of get-rich-quick reality shows that have inundated our culture. Some are interesting, but I feel most are rapidly speeding past "gone too far" territory. (i.e. recent story of couple who faked their child's disappearance in a hot air balloon with the hopes that it would result in a lucrative reality show deal). Well, our country is not alone, nor- I think- are we the worst: last week in Sudan they held a Koran quiz competition. Nothing wrong with seeing which of your neighbors knows their Koran the best, until you realize that the big winners receive AK47s!!! For the runners up, there are hand grinades, other small arms, and computer parts. Pretty scary.

Along those same lines, every year there is a prize awarded to an African ex-leader in recognition of good governance called the Ibrahim Prize. This is the biggest prize in the world: $5 million plus $200,000 every year for the rest of your life. This year, the committee announced that there will be no recipient. This is a sad commentary on the state of African politics and unfortunately overshadows many of the good things happening on the continent. But I believe that the Ibrahim foundation is correct in one aspect: most of the improvements and developments we see cannot be attributed to specific leaders, but are the results of the people coming together to improve their country.

One final note, I recently read the short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Hemmingway. Before reading this, I had heard two comments on it: 1. "that really made me want to climb Kilimanjaro" and 2. "isn't that the one about abortion?". Now let's look at the story: there is a couple who is on a safari-type trip in Tanzania. When the story picks up, and for the ensuing 26 pages the man is dying from gangrene on his leg. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that reading about how one little thorn in Tanzania can wreak such havoc on the body didn't leave me with any burning desire climb Kili. And perhaps I am too dense for the embedded gangrene-aborted fetus symbolism, but I didn't catch anything about abortion. Up next on the list is F. Scott Fitzgerald; I hear it has aliens!